881
ESL homework
(thelemmy.club)
As someone who understands this language, this is hilarious.
Reminds me of how TV shows / movies just depict characters from a non-English country speak their native language for like 2 seconds before switching back to... English... for the rest of the conversation...
like... huh?
oh yea cuz its fiction and they don't want the audience having to read subtitles all the time...
Like who does that?
I came to the US at age 8 and still have to use my native language at home... like it feel really weird to be using English at home...
I reject your reality and substitute my own!
Am I missing an eyebrow?
сука блять
Sometimes, I think it's funny that in Anglo countries it's referred to as ESL, English as a second language.
For us (and I guess many others) it was always English as a foreign language. Could be first foreign language, second foreign language...
second language just means any languages that aren't your first language. not the second language you learn.
English as 4th (Spoken) Language Speaker here...
Before English I have:
Cantonese
Mandarin
Taishanese (well... for Taishanese, I mostly only understand but not speak because parents never spoke it to us, only when talking to the older generations and I overhear it)
Sorry for the low-key brag but since nobody here speak these languages so I just wanna mention it xD
English is my 5th language. Gaelic is my 3rd.
Majority of the world speaks a single language or two at most. Shit half the people I see online can't even speak one.
It makes sense you when you look at it like that. most people in ESL programs only speak a single language, if you speak more than two you probably don't need ESL classes and can learn on your own.
Source? I think speaking one language is pretty rare. Most Europeans speak at least two, most Africans I've met speak 3, lots of Indians speak 3 as well...
sorry I was wrong, it's not a majority. It's roughly 40% of the world's population.
Bit of confirmation bias in that, no?
I think anyone in India and Africa speaks 4 languages easily.
- their regional language (i.e. Masaai, Yoruba, Xhosa)
- the over-regional language (Arabic, Swahili)
- a coloniser language (English, French)
- and possibly just enough of a neighbouring regional language
I think many Chinese people are also bilingual (i.e. Wu+ always mandarin). They often learn another language in school (English or something geographically closer, like Korean).
I think many Chinese people are also bilingual
Yes... some are even tri-lingual because of village dialect (eg: Taishanese) + province dialect (eg: Cantonese) + national dialect (Mandarin)
Unfortunately, the PRC government is heavily pushing Mandarin and some of the local variants (aka: "dialects") are slowly dying... some kids in Guangzhou don't even speak Cantonese anymore...
(i.e. Wu+ always mandarin)
Shanghaiese is semi-dead... from what I heard
Cantonese is slowly limping its way forward only because they have Hong Kong TV, I don't think there are many TV shows in Shanghaiese.
If Hong Kong falls... Cantonese is gonna die... :(
Parents also never spoke Taishanese to me... so yea I unfortunately cannot pass on that language... no Taishanese media... hard to find motivation to learn more about it.
So I only have Cantonese and Mandarin...
I doubt my kids (if I ever have any) would be able to learn it... most 2nd generation overseas Chinese kinda just English-Only with bare minimum in ancestor's language.
Well, if you add up the number of speakers of second languages according to this page, and assume anybody speaks at least one language as their first one, you'll end up with almost exactly 1.4 as the average number of languages any given human speaks.
That's the lower bound, though, as I only added up second languages where the number of speakers is at least one million, and Wikipedia doesn't list many more anyway.
If you're learning in an English speaking country, they're not going to call English a foreign language.
Its ESL in English Speaking countries, and EFL in non- English speaking countries
Viewing it as primary/secondary makes more sense of it.
Remember switching to your secondary language is faster than stumbling over the tip of your tongue.
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How the dialog trully should have happened:
You: Cool! The entrance to the subway is around the corner.
Bob: Thanks for the help, friend!
You: You’re welcome! Good luck.
I don't think bad marks were justified. This is how I see every interaction go with polyglot colleagues, its like a modem handshake and they settle into the most comfortable common language
I have always thought that being able to read, let alone write, Cyrillic cursive is a form of magic. I’ve known a lot of grown Russian men who absolutely could not do either.
Obligatory лишишь ("you will deprive"). Cyrillic cursive really is wild
Uuuuuuuu6
I feel like at least the example here is very legible. What I can not do is read Sütterlin, a historic form of German handwriting script. The text in this postcard is German, which is my native language. Except for some very simple words like "wir" or "mit", I cannot read this.
What was interesting about my son with down syndrome: as he learned to read he became a master at reading cursive...somehow.
We'd hand him Christmas cards that we struggled to read from old European relatives(that wrote in older script) and somehow he'd read it off no problem.
My guess is words always needed decoding for him and context played a role in guessing the word, so it became a skill somehow
Lizbn grofBalmolhmon mind Peril!
According to Google Translate, it means "Lizbn grofBalmolhmon mind Peril!"
Damn, these look kinda fun...
I write all text in my own custom font, which only i can read. I cant barely read other cursive cyrillic text.
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Hhhhehhhhh.... Why do some teachers feel the need to be such dicks? Just smile, have a laugh, get with the joke, let it spice up your life.
I’m in my master’s program for elementary education. If I saw this, I would just pull them to the side and ask them to translate it to me as English. If it comes out sounding plausible, I’d give them full points because they knew how to say it. They could obviously already read it since they knew how to answer the question. So the writing could come later if that was an issue. I could even try and decode it with a translator first before asking for their translation just to see if they were bullshitting me.
If it was a joke, I’d let it slide but let them know that in the future I need them to write it fully in English.
Yes! Thank you! This is how it should be done. Too much of my education was ruined by burnt-out, jaded teachers who wouldn't even acknowledge your existence or even laugh at you when you don't understand why points were subtracted in your test. You sound like someone who's serious about this stuff, and I'm cheering you on!
I can laugh and not give them the points at the same time.
The "???" suggests they didn't get the joke. Like come on, not even a sarcastic "very funny, 2/5"?
I read the ??? as "Are you fucking kidding me?"
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One time back in AP physics on a test I was prompted with "Find the accelerating force on the electron". I could not think of the way to do that in the moment, so I literally wrote No, and wrote down a fake answer so I could use that number for the next part of the problem. I got back the test a few days later and the teacher wrote a smiley face down there. Apparently I made her laugh so long and so hard her family had to check in on her so she just gave me the points.
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when it's every now and then it's great! but some students try to get out of learning by being funny, and it's your job to actually teach them something
On our German tests back in hs, there was a vocab section where we'd use words in sentences. I didn't know one of the words in one of the tests, so I wrote "ich weiß nicht was bedeutet", which means "I don't know what means". Our teacher accepted that one with a laugh, but said it was a one time thing and it would not be allowed again. People still tried their luck with similar tricks after that, but got nothing.
Me, I was just surprised she'd never seen that in her career before. I wasn't expecting to get any points for that. Thought she for sure would have had other smartass students like me.
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Reversed, this is how English as a first language conversations go in foreign lands
In American English it would go
"Do you speak English"
"Nein"
"O K. I. Will. Talk. Slow. So. You. Can. Under. stand. Me."
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this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2026
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